Mental Health before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Role of Partnership and Parenthood Status in Growing Disparities between Types of Families

Abstract

This study investigates mental health inequalities by family type and gender during the COVID-19 pandemic in Germany. Using data from the German Family Panel, we compared three dimensions of mental health (i.e., self-reported stress, exhaustion, and loneliness) one year before the pandemic and in spring 2020. First, two-parent families emerged as a vulnerable group, as the levels of stress and exhaustion they reported during the pandemic converged with those experienced by single parents. Second, a gender gap emerged during this global health crisis, with women, and particularly mothers, reporting significantly worse mental health compared to men in the same family type. Our findings underline the substantive value of studying mental health inequality from a multidimensional perspective and over time. Based on these findings, we urge policy makers to consider more seriously the disproportionate burdens that families, and women in particular, have been carrying due to the pandemic both directly and indirectly.

Parents' work arrangements and gendered time use during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…Our findings suggest that cognitive labor is also an important aspect of inequality in pandemic parenting. These findings further contextualize research that demonstrates negative impacts on the productivity and well‐being of female workers during the pandemic (Hiekel & Kühn, 2022; King & Frederickson, 2021; Lyttelton et al, 2020).…”

Gender, loneliness and happiness during COVID-19

“…Using the same data as Menta (2021) , Clark and Lepinteur (2022) document that COVID-19 policy stringency produced a larger drop in women's life satisfaction, and women were found to report higher levels of general psychiatric disorders and loneliness in the UK during 2020 ( Li and Wang, 2020 ), and greater stress, lack of energy, and loneliness in Germany ( Czymara et al . 2021 , and Hiekel and Kühn, 2022 ). The ‘loneliness epidemic’ is of course not new, and was already a subject of discussion pre-COVID-19 ( Bu et al ., 2020 ; King 2018).…”

Gender inequality in childcare and parental mental health during the Covid-19 pandemic in Germany. Do gender role attitudes matter?

“…Scholars have found that the mental health gap that emerged between people in different types of household structures in Germany early in the pandemic was particularly large among coparents of minor children who were living together (Hiekel & Kühn, 2022). Studies investigating individual mental health and how it changed consistently found that mental health declines were steeper for mothers than for fathers, and were greater the younger the children were (Etheridge & Spantig, 2022;Hipp & Bünning, 2021;Huebener et al, 2021;Pierce et al, 2020;Vicari, Zoch, & Bächmann, 2022;Zamarro & Prados, 2021).…”